


Blood and Leaves

by etherati



Series: Watchmen Zombie!AU [3]
Category: Watchmen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Angst, Character Study, Drama, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Graphic Sex, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-GN, collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-01-31
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-06 21:38:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 6,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherati/pseuds/etherati
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlets, microfics and drabbles set in the Watchmen Zombie!AU, or in AU'ed versions of the AU. Yeah. New addition: As Time Goes By: zombies getting old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Superstition

**Author's Note:**

> Varied subject matter, most written to prompts, chronological.  
> Chapter 1 prompt: 'january repays'  
> Characters: Rorschach  
> Summary: Rorschach wanders at New Years, and pays an old debt.

*

It’s a new year, the calendars say.

In the summer of the year, cold from bloodloss and head filled with the lurching horror of what this was, what this meant, what exactly was spinning through his bloodstream with every panicked step, he hadn’t expected to live to see 1976. Part of him had hoped he would die in the street before he ever reached the brownstone, but he knew it was more likely he’d face his end staring down a shaking barrel, the face beyond it twisted in grief, his own mind too far gone to care.

He stops, leans against a lamppost, hunches his coat tighter around him. Old habits.

This is technically a patrol, but the streets are empty. Everyone’s at the Garden, he knows, waiting for the festivities to swell and crescendo and finally give under their own weight. Daniel’s ill tonight, bundled into the sofa, temperature too high to risk soldiering through it on a night this cold. Probably watching it all on television.

He can feel heat on the breeze; there’s an oildrum fire nearby, and it’s sending out tendrils through the crisp, still air, the night so motionless it could shatter like ice all around him. It’s technically a patrol but he’s mostly putting one foot in front of the other, wherever they lead him, and he’s always been one to trust instinct even before instinct came to ride blisteringly close to the front of his brain. Under a bridge, past the streetwalkers and dealers all huddled together against the cold and uselessness of the night, through alleys and sunken doorways and into places only cats can map and understand.

In the end, he ends up deep in the Park, in front of the Bethesda Fountain. It must be heated somehow, kept just above the frostpoint; the water is clear and dark and with no light reflecting off of its surface, a thousand copper pinpricks glint up at him from its bottom. He pushes one hand through the water – it’s freezing cold, will dry off of him colder – and runs gloved fingertips over the rough concrete, through the pile of coins like some heavier, thicker liquid, sunk to the bottom.

_Wishes, _he thinks, and he scowls under his mask. Children’s wishes; a puppy for Christmas, Mommy and Daddy to stop fighting, the stork to come and take the new baby back to where it came from. Grandmothers and grandfathers, dying in sterile hospital rooms, a little more time bought for them here in pennies and gullibility.

[Blood on his fingers and on the doorframe and slicking the tools in his hands, thoughts running wild and jumbled and settling onto a core of hope that the door will just _open_ – not because he’s afraid for himself, howling starting to echo up the street from the next neighborhood over, but because the house staying dark and quiet would be the worst sort of prophesy and he has to be here, has to be safe, _has to be_–]

He pulls his hand from the water; lets the moisture drip back to its glassy surface in uneven and heavy drops.

[And could that be called a wish, uttered wordlessly into siren-strobing darkness, clambering at a door that won’t open and desperate just to see a living face framed in the entryway’s light before he succumbs?]

His dry hand is fishing in his pocket before he even knows why, sorting through loose change until he comes up with a new penny, brilliant in the soft light from the city, a full moon in miniature resting weightless in his palm.

He settles it to the surface of the water and only then lets it go, soundless, twisting in its descent to the depths. After a moment, the ripples still, and in the breezeless night, the water is again like glass, motionless, impenetrable, trapping its hopes and dreams and winking brassy eyes in what could as well be another world.

Debt paid, Rorschach shoves both hands into his pockets and walks back the way he came, one foot before the other, through the dark spaces and doorways and alleys and bridges, towards home. It’s past midnight, and 1976 is settling into his bones like so much history in reverse, waiting to unfold in all of its horror and splendor and grotesque humanity; he knows Daniel will have waited up.

It’s a new year, the crowd noise lifting over the skyline says – and against all odds, they’ve met it on its own terms, struck the old year's demons, and survived.

*


	2. Playacting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'quarter stickups'  
> Characters: Rorschach, OC  
> Summary: Rorschach stops crime.

*

The kid's been using the city's fear - fear still distilled in the remembered stink of piled bodies and the shrieking chorus that had filled its soundscape at night - to get away with a series of embarrassingly pathetic, small-time stickups. $50 here, $20 there, all corner stores in low traffic areas; he may as well be robbing quarters from gumball machines. But he doesn't need a gun - no one wants to risk a mauling and they're still ill-informed enough to think it's a possibility - so he doesn't have to worry about armed robbery charges, and it's good.

Until the night that he has his hands in the clerk's shirt, yanking him up, best theatrical growl in place, and a firm hand settles on his shoulder, spins him back around.

Oh. Oh, _fuck._

Masks don't usually bother with people like him - with crimes this small and petty. They fight gangs and drug runners, they stop rape and murder. They don't interfere with-

Then an answering growl hits his ears, and he knows: This is personal, and he's not going to be able to frighten this one off with all the horror movie bullshit in the world.

*


	3. Sustenance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'learned appetites'  
> Characters: Rorschach, Dan  
> Summary: There are worse ways things could have ended up.

*

He doesn't like heavy meals. Never has - dense food slows him down, weighs him down, sits in his stomach like a leaden brick - but there are adjustments that have to be made.

Daniel cooks for him, now. Doesn't trust him to do it himself and not set the place on fire, and there's some basis for that. He could probably eat the cuts of sirloin raw at this point, but Daniel says he couldn't stand to be in the room watching him eat it like that, so it is seared bloody rare and no further and it is a reasonable compromise.

He doesn't like heavy food. But Daniel leans to shake the pan, the broad curve of his throat exposed under the kitchen's incandescents, and Rorschach remembers how sharply the blood had smelled and the way Daniel's pulse had raced under his teeth, and he knows that there are worse things than this, here, now: a place he can call home and a living, breathing friend who doesn't hold these weaknesses against him.

*


	4. Deductive Method

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'red sniff'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach  
> Summary: Rorschach can smell communism.

*

Nite Owl puts a hand to his cowled forehead; he has never felt so exasperated in his life. "Rorschach, you can't _smell Communism._"

A quiet 'hrm' in the dark of the warehouse, and Rorschach is crouched over their paltry collection of gathered clues, poking through them with a careful finger. There's a puddle of blood nearby and the thumb of his glove is stained from bringing a sample of it up to his nose, sniffed at with some kind of weighty, measured significance.

"Better sense of smell than you, Nite Owl," Rorschach says, and he says it because it's true, but there's something in the tone that makes Dan think he also says it specifically to infuriate him.

It works. Nite Owl paces. His hand gesticulates indistinctly as he moves, as if he can't quite wrap his mind around the words he's trying to force out of his mouth, as if their inanity is staggering him into incoherency. "...it doesn't matter. Communism is a belief system-"

"Economic system," Rorschach huffs, picking up a matchbook, turning it over. "Inextricably entangled with the ruling body and designed to subjugate free thought."

"...not a _thing_ you can _smell_."

His pacing is making too much noise; a clutch of pigeons scatter up from some industrial litter near his feet and into the rafters. He doesn't notice. Rorschach is examining a stub of pencil now, the eraser bitten clean off. He doesn't say anything, clearly doesn't think his assertion that their suspect 'smells Communist' needs any defending.

"I mean," Nite Owl continues, egged on by the blatant, challenging silence. "If you'd said he smelled anemic, or smelled like a heroin-addict, or hell, even that he smelled like he had Chinese for lunch today, I could buy that. But you _can't-_"

"Stain on the matchbook," Rorschach cuts him off, standing smoothly. "Scent indicates a particular brand of bootlegged potato vodka only served in one venue in the city, Soviet-themed bar and a known haven for Communist sympathizers. Alcohol level in blood shows recent patronage. Pencil stub is covered in rubbed-off newsprint; the ink is one used in a cheap printing process utilized by seven known underground newspapers. Six are radical left-wing, and four admit openly to Communist affiliation."

Silence. Somewhere above them, a pigeon ruffles its feathers.

"Oh," Nite Owl says.

Rorschach pulls a plastic bag from one pocket and carefully starts putting the clues inside, for safekeeping. This character, they've been after for months; the usual lackadaisical 'leave it for the police' crime scene methods aren't going to be productive here. He doesn't say a word, but when a taxi goes by outside, temporarily flooding the room with light, Nite Owl can swear he sees him smirking under the halfway pulled-up mask.

"But, I mean..." A short laugh, still strung out with incredulity. "This isn't 1949. It doesn't really _matter_ if he's Communist. Legally, I mean."

Rorschach shrugs, sealing the bag, and yes - the smirk is there, layered into the tight cording of his voice. "Of course not," he says, as deadpan as he's ever managed. "Was just commenting."

*


	5. Nite Dove

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'doves 44c'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach, some birds.  
> Summary: It's hot, and Rorschach offers snarky commentary.

*

It's hot. It's goddamned hot, midday in July and easily 110 degrees, and they're out in costume because riots and crime sprees and other acts of spontaneous and contagious violence don't always follow their schedule. Dan's dark, dark costume, thick with Kevlar - and the human furnace he has trapped inside it - are doing him no favors.

Rorschach stands off to the side, unbowed, mask following the crowd inscrutably.

Dan puts his hand against the stone wall beside them, ducking his head to run the other up under his goggles, clear the sweat away. Glances up. "You know, you're making me hotter just to look at you, in all those layers."

Rorschach just shrugs, and Dan realizes: pain in the ass a 50 degree core temperature might be in winter, his partner has the extreme upper hand right now, those layers doing nothing but trapping in the cold. He's almost - _almost_ \- jealous.

"Need a lighter colored uniform for summer, Daniel. Reflect the sun away." He nods up to the wall over their heads; a handful of dingy white doves are perched amongst the dark pigeons, seemingly having an easier time.

"What?" Dan asks, grinning. "Take a lesson from the neighbors, huh?"

"Nite Dove," Rorschach mutters, and it's a joke, and unbearable heat or not, it's suddenly a good day.

*


	6. The Further Adventures of Nite Dove

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Maybe the continuing adventures of Nite Dove? Or anything about Dan's silly alt. costumes, I don't think I've seen a fic about his green, aquatic one. (Maybe with a dose of Rorschach snark?)"  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach  
> Summary: Costume tailoring and snark.

*

"Will need a darker version for night patrol," Rorschach manages to mumble out around a jagged, disorganized mouthful of pins.

Dan feels idiotic - really, really stupid, standing on one of Archie's landing blocks while his partner hovers, moving around him, poking and prodding, picking at seams. Pinning in loose flaps of fabric, the silvery glint of them flashing in the overhead lights, and sniping at him to _stand still_ when he flinches.

It's not hot down here in the basement, and he can't help feel exposed and underdressed, but the heat wave outside hasn't broken and an idle joke has become a serious proposition. The armor is just not well-adapted to the weather. "Seems kind of overkill to have two different versions-"

Rorschach looks up at him, and his eyes are covered but Dan's learned to read_ that _look straight through the blots. His mouth quirks slightly around the pins, and he turns to look significantly at the rack of auxiliary costumes visible inside Archie's hatch, green and orange vinyl bright in the fluorescent lighting.

"Well, uh. I like to be prepared?"

"Prepared for the next great flood of New York City," Rorschach mutters, shifting the pins all to one side of his mouth, "But not prepared for summer." A pause, as he tugs at a loose seam; sets to work tacking it in, with the same sort of curved needle that they use to close wounds. "Happens every year. Not a surprise."

Dan just laughs, a self-deprecating sound that acknowledges the shortsightedness without really _admitting_ it.

The fabric bunched at his waist is as white as the hands working it, slow and patient and precise, and it lays against the buttery beige of the tacked-on cape like something pure and untarnished. 'Barn owl', he thinks to himself, silent wings slicing white and deadly through his mind, stooping on its prey like a shadow's evil twin, stark against the black.

Barn owl, not dove. Because that would just be silly.

*


	7. Fever Dream

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: '6-1/2-79 overheat'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach  
> Summary: It's hot and Rorschach offers actual help.

*

The rungs of the ladder are damp with beading moisture, and the rust clinging to them lifts free and sticks to gloves and gauntlets and the leather soles of shoes like torn red autumn leaves. It’s nowhere near autumn – midway through June and as humid and unbearably close as these hot midsummer nights get in the city – and Nite Owl’s goggles tend to render everything violent and blood-colored but tonight even he is seeing something innocent in the clinging flecks of red, some reminder of the relief that always eventually comes.

Which doesn’t mean he wants them in his mouth – so when he looks up and catches a faceful of wet flakes brushed free by his partner’s ascent, he laughs. “Hey, look out down here!”

He’s not surprised when there’s no reply.

They clamber onto the rooftop and stand for a moment, eyes tracing the line of the eaves and the city shapes beyond, firefly-lit towers reaching into firefly-lit sky. Trying to reorient themselves. The plan is surveillance – a boring way to spend patrol but necessary in this case if they want to put a pattern to this thing, stop hacking at the gang’s limbs and go for its beating heart. As far as Dan’s concerned, it’s far preferable to running headlong through the thickening heat on endless minor errands and chases, risking heatstroke or worse.

Rorschach’s crossed to the far edge, overlooking the pocket of alley they’re interested in, and when Dan settles down next to his crouched form and reaches to unhook his cowl, push it and the goggles back, Rorschach spares him a half-second’s glance and a disapproving non-word.

“What?” Dan asks, grinning companionably in the late evening city glow. “No one can see up here, and my goggles were steaming up.”

This time, the non-word of choice sounds almost like laughter.

“No idea how lucky you are,” Dan says, self-amused weariness creeping into his tone. He combs gloved fingers back through hair that’s stuck in loose curls from the heat, sweat-glued into disheveled peaks. Clears his hairline and tries to block out the unbearable way the spandex clings all over, the way there’s really no escaping it no matter how high above the hot milling crowd they climb – the way dizziness threatens, corrupting his vision around the edges and letting him feel every pounding beat of his heart high up in his ears.

Rorschach just regards him, a long and thoughtful silence.

And he’s sure his skin is flushed already, can feel the damp warmth there, but when Rorschach peels a glove free and sets his hand on the nape of Dan’s neck, a shock of cold at the base of his skull almost biting enough to hurt, he’s no longer sure if the heat’s entirely to blame.

Dan’s eyes are closed; he doesn’t remember closing them. He hisses, air sucked between his teeth, when he feels that cold creep into his hair, over his scalp – pinpricks of white behind closed eyes, stark against the heavy blackness. He can feel Rorschach’s eyes on him, some ancient prey instinct kicking in that he’s learned to reinterpret into new and less forbidding contexts, and that means that neither of them are looking down at the street and that isn’t a good thing but he can’t seem to–

The air is too thick and dense to carry sound very far, and so when he feels cold lips press to his throat through two layers of latex, just where overheated blood swims closest under the skin (he knows it can go no further because they are on duty, have work to do, but it still feels like something heavy and overwhelming being lifted away, like a slaking) the sharp whine vibrating up against it ultimately comes to nothing: swallowed by humidity and night sweats and city noise, smeared down alley walls until all that is left is a bare whisper of relief in the midst of New York’s unrelenting midsummer fever dream.

*


	8. Easy Money

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'conning 20'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach, OC  
> Summary: Rorschach wins a bet

*

The thug's eyes are wild, roving madly, whites glinting in what little light filters this far into the rotting inner corridors of the city. They're a long way from the nearest real street, a long way from a casual passerby's notice and alarm. Rorschach is sure the man's aware of that fact, as sure as he is that the twisting struggle under his hands has nothing to do with fear of capture or arrest. Rumors spread quickly in the underworld, and the city's gut-level knowledge of the virus is absolute; the criminals still don't know exactly what's under the mask, but they're fairly certain that whatever it is, it's pale and dead and probably hungrier than they'd like.

Rorschach's got him pinned against the wall with one arm, unyielding in its intent, and the criminal's breath hitches into something like a sob when the other hand come up to hook the mask up over his nose, exposing lips curled back away from teeth and set in an expanse of too much white. Rorschach leans in, a huff of cold breath curling over the man's sweat-stinking skin - inhales sharply, and he can smell the salty tang of flesh and the metallic, heady rush of blood pounding underneath. The growl materializes almost of its own volition, singsongy, rising and falling and thoroughly unhinged.

"Fuck," the man finally spits out, though he's roughing over the hard consonants, a lump in his throat like cold sweat and fear that won't let the sounds through correctly. "Fuck fuck fuck, _Fuck, man_, help me, god, he's gonna fuckin' kill me, you can't let him kill me man jesus _fuck_..."

Further into the shadows, Nite Owl doesn't even look up.

The growl intensifies, and the arm pinning him to the wall slams in harder, jarring him from shoulders on down, knocking breath loose and breaking his litany down into a rhythmic hiccupping, air coming hard-won and ragged. His eyes aren't even focusing anymore, and he's right on the edge of hyperventilating, and his mouth is still moving around something that looks like 'oh god, oh god, oh god' - but the words refuse to come. He smells more like fear than meat now, adrenaline and cortisols, life flailing hard against the bars of its cage for one last reprieve and...

...and Rorschach can sense the moment terror finally wins out and consciousness flees, can feel it acutely: the thug's eyes roll hard towards the top of his head, form slumping limp against the wall, all defenses spent. Vulnerable. Helpless. One corner of his mouth tugs up into a grin against the fluttering, frantic pulse, and he steps back from the wall - letting the man drop, a boneless heap, to the floor of the alley. His free hand comes out of the trenchcoat's pocket wrapped around a halted stopwatch; he studies its face in the insubstantial light, then wanders over towards Nite Owl where he crouches, binding another man's wrists.

"What's the verdict?" Nite Owl asks, concentrating on the complicated knot he's working.

Rorschach shrugs, holding the watch out.

Nite Owl finishes the knot, pulls another piece of cord free from the coil around one arm. Looks up, squints through the goggles. "...thirteen seconds- _damn it,_ Rorschach." Keeping a careful eye on the last man still clinging to consciousness, he stops to rifle through his belt pouches, eventually coming out with a fanfolded and worn twenty-dollar bill. Slaps it into the outstretched hand with more force than is strictly necessary. "I swear you're tampering with that thing; you get faster every time."

Rorschach shrugs again, pocketing the bill and reaching up to pull his mask back down into place. "Practice," he says simply, then takes a piece of cord and returns to the unconscious man by the wall, ducking to bind his hands behind his back.

*


	9. Politics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'overrule 1,630,000'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach  
> Summary: There are politics, and Rorschach ignores them.

*

The motion hits the city ballot the next fall: to make it illegal to deny a person housing, employment, all the usual things, based on their 'metabolic status'. It's a ridiculous euphemism, but it's not like the word 'zombie' was ever going to show up in a city council bill.

The results come in with all of the others, and it's buried somewhere on the third page. 5,750,000 for, 1,630,000 against. As votes go, it's a landslide, but Dan hesitates over it for a moment, brow creasing.

Rorschach reaches across the table, takes the paper away. "Problem, Daniel?"

"No, just - makes me kind of crazy, that there's a million and a half people here who think you shouldn't..."

A low grunt, dismissive. Rorschach turns past the election results, on to the real news, the news that matters, red pen out and ready. There are more important things to worry about.

*


	10. The Way a Crow Shook Down on Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'Dan/Rorschach, snow'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach  
> Summary: Rorschach doesn't like snow; Dan changes his mind.

*

"So, ah." Daniel fiddles with something on the dashboard, though nothing really needs fiddling. Outside the ship's great glass eyes and illuminated by citylight, snow is swirling in thick, unpredictable whorls; a giant's fingerprint on the glass, always changing. It's been a long night of traipsing through waist-high snow just to get to the crime scenes, and they're both unspeakably tired.

Outside, a streetlight flickers, goes out. "What's- What's wrong?"

Rorschach twitches. This is still a new thing, this _asking_. He's been brooding in the copilot's chair between busts all night, knows he's been drawing attention to it unnecessarily. Wishes, for once, that Daniel were more obtuse; a few months ago and he would have just let it slide with his usual quiet patience. Now he _asks. _

"Don't like snow," he says, full-stop. No further explanation.

Daniel laughs, open and guileless. "Gee, and to think I was sitting here loving it. I think my ass is still frozen from that last one." A pause, considering, then: "Why not?"

Rorschach crosses his arms over his chest, sinks back into the seat. Thinks about cold brick walls and a barren yard filled with too many boys, of snowmen and snow angels and–

"What, is it just the cold? Or–"

Now the snow angel is bleeding, or he is, and the older boy is not, never is. Never will be, in any of the cold places of the world.

Never–

"Makes me feel morbid," Rorschach answers finally, startling himself with the honesty. Gestures vaguely with one hand. "Axe somewhere, waiting to fall."

Daniel stares at him for a moment, then laughs again, and presses a button on the panel. The hatch in the ship's belly slides open and they're low over the city, over a deep snowbank. "That's ridiculous," he says; Rorschach can hear the fondness behind the words. “Everything makes you feel morbid.”

And both surprise and Rorschach's exhaustion are on his side as he hauls the smaller man to his feet and shoves him straight through the hatch.

*

A soft landing; a billowing _oomf _from all around him as the stuff displaces, compacts under his weight and flies up to dance above him, crystal in the streetlight. Dizzying. From above, laughter again, muffled by the snow.

Furious. _ Enraged. _ Going to– going to– and Daniel must be out of his _mind_ with fatigue, but it's no excuse, and he’s going to–

Then Daniel is in the snow too, on top of him, sealing this man-shaped hole against the light and the cold air and the heat of his body collects between the walls of soft ice and his mouth is–

And his _hands_ are–

Daniel's muttering something about insulative properties and how the snow can fucking well do something _for_ them tonight, and about how much he's wanted this, all night, how badly he's needed it. The fury dissipates all at once, is replaced by a familiar scrabbling burn, crawling its sickening way through bone and skin, shaking a low, bitten-off moan free as it goes.

Through his clothes and his mask, wherever Daniel touches him, the ice crystals prickle and melt in that lingering warmth and slide, slide, down the planes of his face like watery fingers, like the fingertips that are solid on his hips, glancing across his thighs, soft over his face and god, his _mouth_–

–he braces his heels in the packed snow under him, arches up against taut muscle and strong hands–

["Snow angel, snow angel," the younger boys had said as he lay back in the cradle of white, watching the flakes swirl towards him and he'd felt _safe_–]

And in this tight, hot-cold space, the noises wrung from deep in his chest seem obscene, indulgently loud, but nothing escapes to the air above – and once the falling white has frosted over Daniel's cape and cowl, there is nothing to see in the quiet city darkness but another patch of snow, shifting just a bit too rhythmically in the wind.

Safe.

*


	11. Spoons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Random fluff.  
> Characters: Rorschach, Laurie, Dan  
> Summary: Laurie interrupts Rorschach's breakfast.

*

It'd be unfair to call it morning; it's pushing one in the afternoon but vigilantism keeps its own schedules and even the metabolically challenged wake up craving Frosted Flakes from time to time. Rorschach's sitting hunched over a bowl at the kitchen table, half-masked, crunching the flakes dry and sucking each one carefully for its sugar, when all at once there's someone else in the kitchen.

The someone isn't Daniel. That takes a moment to actually sink in – he's halfway to a grumbled, incoherent greeting before his brain throws an interrupt – and another second or two for the foraging, sleep-clumsy figure in too-big pajama bottoms and one of Daniel's old sweatshirts to resolve itself into-

The spoon falls from his mouth to the table with a clatter.

Juspeczyk turns toward the noise, all fight instincts kicking to life, buried under a deep bleariness.

"Oh," she mutters, rubbing her eyes, going back to rummaging through the cabinets like she has right to them, like she _lives here. _ Like she– "S'only you. Scared the shit out of me."

"What are you doing here," he growls, because going by the clothes she's clearly here by invitation and this is _his _home – not sure when he started thinking of it that way, _home, _not _residence, _but it's irrelevant at the moment. Point is, she doesn't belong here.

"Currently? Ugh. Looking for coffee. Any idea where he keeps it? I feel like a fucking zombie."

"Not funny."

"Not intended to be." She squints against the afternoon light, sallow and exhausted, and one of her eyes is blackened.

_Must have gotten in a lucky shot, _he catches himself thinking, but then immediately dashes the thought away. Punctuates each word with a steadily rising growl. "Why. Are you. Here."

"I don't know," she says, grinning teasingly through the fatigue. "Why _am_ I here? You're the detective."

The growl pitches lower, more dangerous.

"Oh, cut the horror movie bullshit and eat your cereal," she says, finally finding the coffee canister and peeling the lid back with fingers that are bandaged in more than a few places. "You know that shit doesn't scare me."

"Should."

"Doesn't. Christ, you've never even eaten anybody, what the hell kind of street cred is that? Great undead terror of the underworld, eating cereal with a cartoon tiger on the box. Gonna have to work a little harder to–"

The spoon pings across the room with deadly accuracy. She ducks, just in time, and it continues on to narrowly miss Daniel as he steps in from the living room, lodging in the doorframe. The look on Daniel's face – part confusion, part horror, part disappointment – is enough to send Juspeczyk into a fit of sleep-deprived laughter, and even Rorschach can't quite suppress a fractional smile, just the tiniest twitch of muscle, there and gone again in the space of a blink.

*


	12. Under Duress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'devalved doctors'  
> Characters: Dan, Rorschach  
> Summary: Rorschach doesn't trust doctors, but they are sometimes necessary.

*

He comes awake in gradual, stuttering pieces, but his world is unitized and simple: pain, centered in his head and his chest, and a clinging feeling of violation. The light overhead is too bright and it makes his head ache even more sharply, and the way he’s lying flat on his back makes his ribcage pull and spasm.

He can't breathe. Oh god, he can’t–

There are hands on either side of his chest, cold through the layers of fabric, moving jerkily and without clear purpose and it's not helping and there's a short sound of panic and he _can't breathe_ and everything hurts and a wave of nausea rolls over him, hard and–

Hands on his throat, rubbing slow circles. Someone is talking to him, incomprehensible but he knows it, he knows that voice–

[Fighting on the docks, and these bastards are getting smarter, too smart – they get separated in the fray and he’s fighting well but it all skews off to the side, slows down, when he sees the gun come up. He knows he's not going to be able to move in time, knows Rorschach is too far away to help and he's spinning and ducking and trying to divert the shot and _why didn't he wear his armor tonight–_]

The hands are soothing air back into him, and the voice becomes words, becomes a careful, calm mantra of _Breathe, Daniel, breathe, slow, just breathe. _ His chest feels cracked in half under their touch, split open and bleeding.

[The gun fires twice and the first has just skimmed his scalp through the cowl and he's thinking _missed, thank god_ when the second– the second–

Hands pulling back fabric, splaying over skin, trembling for a moment before they press down, hard – and he knows that voice.]

When he opens his eyes – and it takes some doing because the light is still too bright and he doesn't even remember closing them against it, but he must have – the face hanging over him is just as familiar. It's somehow even paler than usual, from panic or exhaustion or just the washed-out fluorescent light falling over them, industrial rod lamps humming from the ceiling, punctuated by the steady, too-fast beeping of a cardiac monitor.

He's in a hospital room.

He's in a hospital room and Rorschach is half-sitting at the edge of his bed, partly in uniform and partly not, hands stilled over the blankets now and god, he looks terrible. Looks like Dan_ feels_, like someone's come along and scooped him out and left a shaky, collapsing shell behind.

[It's a chill night and the dock is wet but he doesn't feel particularly cold, not like they always say in movies, and he tries to say so – because that's a good sign, isn't it? – but he hears a horrible choked noise above him that makes him afraid to look, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.]

"Awake for real now?" Rorschach is asking him, and the brilliant white light behind him makes him look unreal, barely there.

Dan nods. It hurts, and his head feels heavy, like it's swollen to twice its size; he tries to ignore it. A corded plastic tube is pressed into his hand, a button on one end.

"Morphine." Rorschach gestures to the button.

Dan narrows his eyes through the pain. "You said painkillers were... god." Talking hurts, a lot, more than breathing, more than not being able to breathe. "...were for people who can't handle..."

Sharp eyes, sharper frown; fingers trace down the center of his chest, and he can feel the stitches shift under them. This might be more serious than he thinks it is. "Just push the button, Daniel."

So he does, and after a moment, the world comes back into focus – fuzzy focus, soft around the edges, but he isn't drowning in sensation anymore, writhing in nervous overload, sick and spinning.

A long period of silence, then, of drifting in and out of awareness, fractured moments of feeling a hand smoothing back his hair and tracing lines he can't see or make sense of, mapping out his skin through sheet and hospital gown like something precious and ephemeral, something worth committing to memory. Time passes; he’s not sure how much.

"Thought you didn't trust doctors," he mumbles, half-awake.

"Hrm." The hand pauses; his tone is casual. "Threatened to chew all their hearts out if anything happened to you."

Through the haze, Dan's just coherent enough to be horrified and touched all at once. He probably smiles.

Fingers press into his skin, grounding in his warmth. "Seems to have done the trick."

*


	13. AU - Mistakes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: 'serum 11'  
> Characters: Rorschach, OCs  
> Summary: An AU of Now, As Before in which Rorschach goes to the hospital instead of to Dan's.

*

They're holding him down, threading fresh leather bindings over his arms, his wrists, his ankles – around his throat, to quiet his seizing and keep him from breaking any noses with his skull. They have good reason; the dull off-white hospital scrubs are twisted and knotted around him and he hasn't stopped fighting since they moved him up to the experimental ward this morning. His wrists are chafed raw and blue-grey from wrenching at the restraints. He's taken to frothing. He's not even aware of it.

The doctors are wearing hazmat suits on this level. They're very careful of their drips and syringes; every vial and bag marked with a violent swath of red and a stark biohazard symbol, and the suits don't come off because they don't even want to breathe _air_ that's been exposed to the things they're shooting into him.

Hands clamp onto his shoulders, hold him down and relatively still. He's long since torn the stitches out of his leg; they haven't replaced them, and aren't likely to need to at this rate. Whatever's in this syringe – there've been close to a dozen over the last sixteen hours – stings going in, cold and sharp. It's different, not like the others they've given him, an ache burning through his fouled and dirty blood, coiling up somewhere in his chest; he can already feel his breath starting to falter.

"We're going to make you whole, Mr. Kovacs," says the doctor hovering over him, and all he can see in the plastic shielding over the man's face is himself, wide-eyed and death-pale and _thrashing_, struggling. And that's fine, because he'd rather the last thing he sees be proof and reassurance that he went down fighting, instead of the cold black snake-pit eyes he's sure are hiding behind the hazmat mask, full of hollow lies and even more hollow promises.

Whole. The word makes no sense, right now; his uniform is in the alley, his mask, his name, everything he really is tucked away in safety. His blood, vial after vial, is in a lab somewhere downstairs, being pulled apart and studied, and he feels empty and scooped out, ready to put an end to this, one way or another. His eyes are bleeding, and that shouldn't be possible anymore, but the wetness tracking his cheeks is cold and sticky against the air and–

He shouldn't have come here. He should have borne the pain, and taken the chance of a longer trip – risked further attack, risked passing out from blood loss, risked exposure – and gone to the Owl's Nest.

Gone to Daniel.

*


	14. As Time Goes By

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Captcha prompt: 'grey suffuses'. They get on in years and Dan seems to be leaving Rorschach behind, but the city always surprises.

*

There are many ways their time together could end.

They worry over the usual things, when they have time to worry at all– violence in all its varied forms, disease, the vicious unpredictability of chance. They worry about the unusual, too, as Daniel starts finding fine grey hairs mixed in with the rest and Rorschach doesn't, remains stubbornly unchanging. It prompts halted conversations in the dark, fingers drifting through shadow to touch hair, face, throat, soft like reverence: _What if I– and you don't–_

There's so much about mortality they don't understand, yet.

Neither is slowing down, so they don't even consider abandoning their city. What they lose over the years in raw strength and reaction time they gain back in experience and precision, and even as Daniel is turning 40, they are a force to be reckoned with.

Still, more grey hairs, more fine lines, _What if I get old, and you–_

Of course, one of them will go before the other does. That goes without saying, barring some catastrophic accident. But Rorschach starts hating the haunted shine in his eyes with a passion he's never brought to bear on it before. It is no longer just a badge of how different he is, how _other_ – that stopped mattering years ago – no, now it's a constant reminder, sliding in and out of the mirror, that he may have uncounted decades to walk the streets alone.

When he was young it was a certainty, a thought he bore gracefully. Now, he does not think he will allow it to happen.

*

The question comes up all the time now, among scientists and doctors: how long do the infected have to live? Not six months or a year or even two – it's a grotesque inversion, and across the city, its ghouls don't seem to want to age. It might be in people's heads and expectations, or it might be real.

It comes up over and over, but no one has an answer.

*

"We don't know," Daniel says in bed one morning, and it's come out of nowhere but really it hasn't. They're both shining with sweat and breathing hard, a tangle of limbs, and Daniel's hand is on his face, hot. "No one knows for sure. You might just have better… it doesn't mean anything."

Rorschach doesn't say anything, even when Daniel smoothes his hair back with a broad, damp palm, presses a kiss next to his eye.

"We don't know."

*

It's the first steaming cup of coffee of the morning, breakfast carts out at seven AM, Daniel's treat. They're in their street clothes, and the sun's just made it far enough over the line of buildings to hit them directly, sharp and toothy from the side.

Daniel looks down at him through the miasma of steam, through a thousand huddled secrets in this space, and now there's another: he smiles, thumbs over the stiff bristle off hair at Rorschach's temple, spreading it into the light.

Rorschach asks the question without asking it.

"Yeah," Daniel says, and the sun's hitting him too, diffusing through the brown of his hair and catching the off-color striations like quicksilver, making him glow.

Around them, the street's stumbling to life, its daily resurrection, but Rorschach has never been so content to know he won't be continually reborn with it. He never thought he could find so much comfort in the knowledge that old age will come for him, that he will become creaky and ancient alongside Daniel; that in time, he will die, too.

Daniel leans in, brushes the spot of grey with his lips – then straightens and orders his own coffee, and the morning goes on.

*


End file.
